The Smell that Changed the Day

I read something lately about making your first thoughts of the morning positive and full of good intentions in order to have a mindset that is conducive for a happy, productive day.  

We've all heard that, I'm sure, but Tuesday, when my alarm went off at 6:45am, and I awoke from a dream to the darkness of the morning, I tried extra hard.

I get to see my sweet man today!  I get to take my van to get fixed, and it's a nice day to drive!  I have lots of work to do for the Copper Harbor website revamp!  I feel good, and I'm going to have a great day!  Time to get Brady P. up for school!  I wonder what silly greeting he'll have for me this morning...

My thoughts and intentions were set.  I was feeling great.

Then I opened the door to Braeden's room.

I was instantly slapped in the face with a terrible odor.  An odor nobody should ever have to smell... or sleep in... as Brady P. did.

"Hey, Braeden..." I uttered.  "Did you puke?"

"Yes," he said in the darkness.

He often says yes to questions he doesn't understand, so I wasn't sure if he knew what I was asking at the time.

"I'm going to turn on your light, okay?  Cover your eyes."

"Yes," he said.

I surveyed the scene around him and wondered how long he had been laying in his own vomit (sorry, this might be kind of gross, if you're eating or not a parent).

"Braeden, did you puke?" I asked again after not seeing any big puddles or chunks, but definitely trying not to do the same thing myself.

"Yes," he said.  He held his sea turtle out to me and pointed to a white ring around his shell.  Yup.  He knew what my question meant!

"Oh, sweetie!"  I lamented.  "Do you feel okay?"

"No!" he said.

"Do you want to go to school today?"

"No!" he wined and began to squirm as another bout of curdled food began to wretch from his guts.

I'll spare you the rest of the details of that moment because that is not my point.  Here's my point.  Well, the first one.

Just as I was feeling good and purposeful and ready for the day, I got a whiff of a sick little boy, and my personal goals went down the tubes.  Everything changed in an instant.

But I had to roll with it.

In between cleaning and changing a little boy and holding him upright while he went into another round of liquid expulsion, I had to call and text a few people to cancel my plans for myself and for him at school.

Whew.  I got everyone notified.  I got the boy cleaned up.  He seemed stable for a moment, so we snuggled in my bed until he woke up... in another bout.

Oy!

But this time, and the couple times after he was done sharing the juice he swallowed, he went from a hot squirrelly mess to looking at me with gratitude and saying "all done."

"You're all done vomiting?" I asked in disbelief.  I mean, how does a little kid know that it's over for now?

"Yup!" he answered and ran off to play as fast as I could catch him to wipe him up and change his clothes.  Again.

Here's my second point.  That kid is tough as nails.  I mean, wow.  

He's sick from some bug that we couldn't really figure out yet, goes into these awful bouts of purging, then goes about the rest of the day like business as usual. 

Sure, he didn't really eat a whole lot and he got tired for bed earlier than usual, but we still danced to the Beach Boys, jumped on his trampoline, did puzzles, watched a couple videos on the computer, read books, took a bath, etc.

Snuggling warm and dry after bath number one

Business as usual.

Just some wrenching and lots of laundry in between.

Well, rest assured he is much better today.  Day two missed of school in a row, but I wasn't chancing the teachers having to clean that up!

We made it through.  It's just life.  Life that we have to carry with a positive attitude in order to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.

That's just what we did.  Thanks to everyone who wished him well and called with concern.  And thanks to Craig for coming to help and snuggling with us.

Here's to another wonderful, productive day... no matter how life makes you follow your nose!